


Peace in the Snow

by devilinthedetails



Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Betrayal, Decisions, Gen, Grief, Loyalty, Memories, Mercy - Freeform, Peace, Snow, Winter Woods - Freeform, alone in the woods
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-29
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-06-18 04:56:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15478137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/pseuds/devilinthedetails
Summary: Alone in the woods, Roald reflects on Roger's fate. Set after Roger's death during In the Hand of the Goddess.





	Peace in the Snow

Peace in the Snow

Roald, who had waved away his guards before entering the clearing, sat on the log of a fallen oak—one of what must be a hundred such remains scattered throughout the Royal Forest’s floor—that protruded from the blanket of snow covering the ground. He expected the snow to be a pure, radiant white when he looked at it, but instead it glittered as if illuminated by a thousand candles in the winter sunlight that danced upon it, shining through bare branches that stretched like pleading arms toward the gray sky. 

The surface of the snow wasn’t perfect—the indents of his boots marred it with a path to his log and footprints of small animals who hadn’t slept through the winter crisscrossed the clearing—but it seemed marvelously unperturbed by the creatures who had trodden upon it. There was a separate peace and timelessness about the snow that made him reflect on Roger, whom he had loved as a son only to be backstabbed…

Roger had always enjoyed the snow. As a boy, he would stomp across it in fur-lined boots from Scanra until his cheeks were crimson as holly berries with exertion. He would collapse on snowy courtyards and thrust his limbs around him until he was satisfied with the circle he would leave behind him when he rose. He would—because he hadn’t always used his Gift for nefarious purposes—roll snowmen that glowed orange with his magic to the gasping delight of the court ladies and build snow forts with walls warm to the touch that wouldn’t melt until spring. 

Even Duke Gareth had appreciated the architecture of those forts though now he was as implacable as the grave he described when he insisted that Roger should be buried without ceremony in an unmarked traitor’s tomb. When Roald, tearing his hair out with confusion over what to do with the body of the beloved nephew who had turned betrayer, had asked Duke Gareth in his anguish where Roger should be laid to rest, Duke Gareth had stared at him as if he were a mythical monster and answered tartly that he thought it obvious what should be done with a traitor’s cursed corpse. 

It was so simple for Duke Gareth, a straightforward equation where traitors be punished to the full extent of the law even after death. He would never forgive Roger for the terrible toll that Roger’s unnatural illnesses had taken from Lianne, but Roald couldn’t hate the dead as Duke Gareth did. Lianne—his lady and his love—wasn’t bitter toward him or Roger either. 

Last night, when he had cradled her to his chest beneath woolen blankets to warm her although she had still shivered as she burrowed ever closer to him, she had whispered when he admitted that he didn’t know where to bury Roger that he would soon decided what was best and she would support him entirely. 

Frail as she was, she was still his staunchest supporter. Though reduced to skin and bone, she stayed unwaveringly strong in her trust in him. A love for her that was so beautiful and fierce it hurt his chest had flared within him like a flame. He had kissed her thinning brown hair, her softly shutting eyelids, and finally her forever faithful lips, assuring her with words passionate as his kisses that her love and loyalty meant everything to him and always would…

Gazing around the clearing as an icicle sliding off an evergreen bough into the snow shattered his reverie, it occurred to him that he couldn’t live without Lianne and her love, but there was solace in the snow blanketing the clearing. There was a quiet serenity in the snow and a piercing mercy in the sun that gleamed upon it like shimmering scales of fish. There was the promise that what was meant to harm Lianne and him couldn’t hurt either of them in the end, and that they would have peace if they could forgive and forget what Roger had done to them, coating their memories of him in a blank snow whiteness. 

Changed, Roald pushed himself off his log, which was a testament to the fate that awaited those who refused to bend before life’s winds, to return to the palace and order preparations be made to lay Roger—and the painful past he represented—to rest in state in the Conte crypts. Lianne, the steadfast heart that always beat in unison with his, would understand even if nobody else did. That was all Roald needed to know and would ever need to know.


End file.
